Tag Archives: evidence

Secularists, when asked for evidence to support their position, reply with comments that show they neither read the article in question, nor do they understand the issues being discussed. Instead they reply with mockery, insults and ridicule. Their comments are usually off-topic.

They constantly ask, “What evidence would you accept?” like verifiable evidence is a matter of opinion. They also frequently ask, “What are your qualifications for saying that?” Perhaps they believe that truth and verifiable evidence changes depending on your degree, certification or some other way you meet their approval.

However, there are a few exceptions. Out of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Secular Humanist comments on the facebook page “Creationism,” I have seen a few attempts to present actual evidence.

First, I wish to thank Secular Humanist James Dickson for defining the Humanist position so clearly in two brief paragraphs. He opens by saying, “When I was walking home from work, I noticed people putting salt on their walkways. I know that salt will create a reaction that will melt the ice. I know this for a fact. I, however, could not see a reaction taking place with my eyes. We would be able to measure the reaction with the proper equipment, but just with my eves, I couldn’t notice a difference.”

Twice he says, “I know.” How do we know this common piece of knowledge? Someone with “the proper equipment,” to use James Dickson’s words, examined, measured and published the results of placing salt on an icy sidewalk. People like James, myself and the rest of you reading this article believe those test results. We have faith in the “proper equipment” and we trust the people publishing the results of their measurements of the reactions. That is exactly the way the words believe, faith and trust are used in the Bible. Those words mean examine and verify evidence, then accept the results of that examination.

James Dickson then continues. “We can’t see evolution over just one generation. It takes eons. It takes a LOT of time for evolution to occur. Why then, do creationists insist that we should be able to see great changes in a few generations?”

[ James has said we misquoted him in this statement. Here is the correction he asked us to include. “Why do creationists ask to see great changes over SHORT spans of time when they take eons?” You cut out ” over SHORT spans of time when they take eons?” This is very important information!]

I, as a Creationist, have often written similar statements and said that this is what secularists believe. I am always called a liar, because this is such obvious circular reasoning. “Why then, do creationists insist that we should be able to see great changes…?” means “Why do you insist on verifiable evidence?”

In this statement James Dickson is first accepting evolution on faith. He then says that evolution “takes a LOT of time” so of course there is no evidence.

Second, Ecotropic Recombinant Viruses, ERVs, or retroviruses, were presented as proof of evolution. ERVs exist today. They can be examined. However, when I asked how that is a proof of evolution, an article was linked to which “proved” that ERVs are responsible for mammals developing placentas. The article contained many observations of the way ERVs act and react in modern laboratories.

The article had no record of anyone observing anything like a placenta developing from nonplacental tissue. When I brought that key point up, the comments were all along the line that placental evolution occurred millions of years ago. They say that the current evidence proves that ERVs are the mechanism by which placental development must have happened.

Once again, this is circular reasoning, not evidence. Accept evolution as a fact, then believe that EVRs are the mechanisms that caused at least some part of evolution.

I am not this writing to question any of the laboratory work done on EVRs. But neither is any of the research done on EVRs any kind of verifiable evidence of what happened millions of years ago. The current lab work on EVRs demonstrates without question what can be done now, in a laboratory, directed by a human intelligence. There is no verifiable evidence of what an EVR could have done millions of years ago by random chance.

The scientific fact of a placenta today has no scientific connection to EVRs millions of years in the past.

But both of these points collapse if the earth is only 6,000 years old. Evolution requires time, a great deal of time, millions of years. As James Dickson said, “It takes a LOT of time for evolution to occur.” Creationist Science agrees with this statement completely.

So I was very pleased when Jake Benicio Lorenzo attempted to defend the concept of deep time. These earlier points are moot without deep time. He said, “”There are many processes which are simply more than 6,000 years.”

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.

“It takes a photon a minimum 17,000-50,000,000 years to reach the surface of the sun once it is released, and our sun is a comparatively small star compared to others that have been discovered which are much greater in size and density.

When Olaf Roemer made “the first true measurement of the speed of light” in 1676, he did not know the actual distance from the earth to Jupiter. He measured the time discrepancy between the disappearance and reappearance of Jovian moons behind Jupiter when the earth was close to Jupiter and when the earth was maximum distance from Jupiter.

This measurement is not perfect. It is, however, considered very good, exceptional for the equipment and information available to Olaf Roemer. Even before this, men were measuring the diameter of the sun. They concluded that the sun was losing mass (shrinking) at a rate of .01 percent per year, on average. They used the same type of equipment and had access to the same information as Olaf Roemer.

Based on centuries of measurements of the diameter of the sun, Lord Kelvin worked with Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz to develop the Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction theory for the power of the sun. This theory would have the sun too hot for life on earth a mere 50,000 years ago. The current orbit of the earth would have been inside the sun about a million years ago.

The point is that humans have no instruments inside the sun. We have no way of knowing for certain how the sun is powered internally. So the statement that “It takes a photon a minimum 17,000-50,000,000 years to reach the surface of the sun once it is released” is belief, not science.

His next point was craters on moon. (Note that the writer used hyphens as bullet points)

“-When we look at craters on the moon and other bodies in the solar system, we find many craters. Debris are constantly bombarding the moon, however the impact craters that we observe are generally due to more substantial impacts. The newest crater (named Giordano Bruno) is thought to have hit the moon in 1178 AD which was observed by an estimated 5 people – this eyewitness account coincides with the results of independent tests. Many craters have craters within them and those craters often have more craters within them. This helps us to determine how old some of these craters are, and the estimates go way beyond 6,000. Even if you are skeptical about the testing processes, it is difficult to explain how our moon, peppered in many craters could only be 6,000 years old.”

This is very believable. That is, if there was no change in the rate of crater formation on the moon for millions of years. That is an act of faith, not science. It is physically possible for almost every single crater on the moon to have been put there on the same day. Not likely, but possible. Once again, this is not science. The scientific, verifiable fact is that we have no idea when most of the moon’s craters were formed.

The last evidence offered by Jake Benicio Lorenzo is fossil evidence on different continents.

“-When we look at certain fossils, we find that they are present on different continents. This is most reasonably explained by continental drift, which is known to take a lot longer than 6,000 years. The following image shows examples of this:

Once again, a superficial look at the evidence might cause someone to come to the conclusion that the earth is “a lot [more] than 6,000 years old.” The fossils are very real. They are very good evidence that there was only one continent sometime before the fossils were embedded. And there are far more fossils which can be presented as evidence.

The problem is “continental drift, which is known to take a lot longer than 6,000 years.” Yes, there was once only one continent. And yes the continents split apart. But scientifically, there is no evidence that the continents “drifted” apart. That “assumes” the continents have always moved at the same, or similar, rate of speed as they are moving now. That is not science. That is faith.

In a paper which does not support creation-science, “Not Continental Drift but Plate Tectonics,” this statement is made. “Plate tectonics enjoys nearly universally acceptance, and Wegener’s continental drift is recognized as a perceptive but fatally flawed forerunner of the modern theory.” The position supported here is that plate tectonics, a comparatively rapid movement of the continents, is true, and Continental Drift is not. The paper can be found at:

It is possible that plate tectonics caused continents to move apart very rapidly, perhaps in less than one year. It is also possible that this is not the way the continents moved. But the scientific evidence does not support the statement than continental drift is known to take more than 6,000 years. People may choose to believe that, but the evidence does not support their beliefs.

Everything that I have seen presented as evidence of deep time by secularists falls into the same pattern. First, observe some current phenomenon, such as the number of craters on the moon, the amount of salt in the oceans, the movement of the continents or the Grand Canyon. Second, carefully observe how the phenomenon is acting now or in the near past. Third, assume both deep time and uniformitarianism. Apply deep time and uniformitarianism to the current phenomenon. Fourth, claim that the current rate of the phenomenon is proof of deep time and uniformitarianism.

I used the Grand Canyon as an example because even though creationists and the National Geologic Society disagree over the amount of time it took to form the Grand Canyon, we agree on the method. The physical evidence proves that the Grand Canyon was formed by an upthrust. The National Parks Service has two monuments explaining how this happened, one in Flagstaff, AZ and the other at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon at the national park. On these signs it explains that the “Kaibab Uplift” took place “at least” 75 million years ago. Even though the physical evidence forces them to admit that the Grand Canyon was formed by a catastrophe, they still use uniformitarian beliefs to date the catastrophe. Since the physical evidence demands that the Grand Canyon was formed through a catastrophe, that catastrophe which formed the Grand Canyon could just as easily have taken place less than 5,000 years ago.

Nothing offered as evidence of an earth more than 6,000 years old stands up to true scientific scrutiny. And without millions of years, evolution is not possible.

Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods and other books about archaeological sites he has personally explored and studied in his search for facts about ancient times, is certainly no creationist. Yet he said, “The further back you go, the more that the history that’s taught in the schools and universities begins to look like some kind of fairy tale.”

Like any religion which enthrones man in God’s place, there is a desperate and irrational need to attack true religion. “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence,”3 says Richard Dawkins. In the Bible, in the founding documents of US history and in the US court system prior to the liberal takeover, belief was (and still is in reality) a legal term. Belief is the decision of a juror based on evidence. Faith is the action one takes based on belief based on tested evidence. The modern Secular Humanist twists the word “faith ” to mean the opposite of its historical definition. “Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”4 This is the “blind leap of faith ” of Karl Barth and neo-orthodoxy, not the historic meaning of faith found in the Bible and US history.

The faith of the secularist, which is truly “in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence,” has a religious belief that the material universe is all that is, was or ever will be. The material universe is the ultimate reality. “Who is more humble?” asked Carl Sagan, “The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book [the Bible] must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”5 Sagan is pretending humility while arrogantly dismissing the possibility that God might have actually written down His words out of love for his creation.

We, as Christians, as often asked by people who believe that they are intellectuals why we believe what we believe. I am not aware of any brief list which is not woefully inadequate. The following list could easily be expanded, but it is a good ready reference. (Please note that many of these points are dealt with in Antidisestablishmentarianism.)

I. Evidence from reason

A. The Design of the universe demands a Designer

B. Life begets life; no scientific evidence of any form of spontaneous generation

C. Thermodynamics

1. 1st law of thermodynamics: matter and energy are interchangable and can neither be created or

destroyed.

2. 2nd law of thermodynamics: (entropy) all energy transformations are in a downward direction.

The universe is gradually deteriorating from a position of greater complexity and order to an

eventual end of complete disorder with the simplest elements, probably only hydrogen, motionless

3. “the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” Gen 1:2

IV. Evidence from the material world: What we can know from our senses.

The following scientific facts do not prove the Bible or the Biblical timeline to be true. While each of these scientific facts work within a Biblical framework or timeline, they tend to discredit the possibility of Uniformitarianism.

A. Genetics

1. Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to daughter

a. estimates of the rate of mutations were made based on uniformitarian assumptions and mitochondrial Eve was estimated to be 144, 000 years old.

b. a 500 year old sample was taken; the calculated results show mitochondrial Eve to be approximately 6,500 years old (Nature Genetics vol. 15, April 1997 pp. 363-367. )

2. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon DNA samples are both well within the range of modern homo sapiens.

3. Lucy and other proposed links between homo sapiens and animals have DNA samples well within the range of modern animals.

4. RNA

B. Dating methods

1. potassium/argon

2. uranium 235

3. Carbon 14: it becomes such a small amount that it is almost unnoticeable after about 60,000 years and disappears entirely after a little more than 100,000 years. All fossils which have been tested have C14.

4. all dating methods have an unknown point of origin

C. Ammonites

1. extinct marine creatures

2. wide dispersement

3. intact

4. on top of Mount Everest

D. Rock layers put in place while still moist

1. sharp bends, folds following matching contours

2. massive sections at unusual angles

E. Volcanism

1. modern lava flows have dates compatible with lava flows dated as ancient

Conclusion: Many books are written to explain each subpoint. Few people, however, will stay around to listen. This list is a good starting point, however, for honest people who are legitimately seeking the truth.

“Secular Humanism: Religious Mythology” is lettered on my computer bag. So “What is Secular Humanism?” The quick, simple answer is that it is the religion of self-indulgence with no possible consequences for the way we live in any kind of life after death. Beginning somewhere around the Kennedy administration, Secular Humanists learned that if they lied and claimed that they weren’t a religion, they could get federal funds. They also got political power to force everyone to practice their religion. The following more complete definition is from our book Antidisestablishmentarianism.

6. What Is Secular Humanism?

“The United States Supreme Court has held that secular humanism is a religion. Belief in evolution is a central tenet of that religion.” Edwards v Aguillard, U. S. Supreme Court, 1987.1

Almost every American colony had some form of establishment of religion. This was because their religion consisted of proven and necessary facts of existence. Religion was reliable, logical and rational to them. The modern established religion of Secular Humanism teaches that it is the only scientifically-based belief system in existence. It claims that all other religions are not scientifically-based, but the opposite is true. The Bible, upon which true religion is based, is a book of Science, and Secular Humanism is a religion of mythology.

“… Scientific history … is that the method that we use is something akin to the scientific method. It is based on at least three characteristics …. The first is to establish that the evidence is reliable. The second is making certain that the analysis being made is logical. And third, the analysis must lead to a generalisation that is based on rational argument.”2

Since time began man has only been able to take one of three positions toward a scientific fact. The first is belief, which means to accept the fact as it is and interpret its significance correctly. The second is unbelief, which means to reject a fact or give it the wrong interpretation. The third position is some degree of compromise between the other two, such as accepting a fact but wrongly interpreting its significance. It is also possible to misinterpret the true nature of the fact and misapply it to come to other wrong conclusions.

Belief does not mean mere opinion, as modern culture has degraded the word. The legal term belief means to accept something as true based on the facts available. Facts are true whether or not you choose to believe them. The Scriptures are the basis of scientific facts. This is the standard the founding fathers began with and also the colonials before them. All scientific facts are based on the Scriptures. “Facts are stubborn things;” said John Adams, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”3

Since the opposite is drilled into everyone through western culture and western education, we need to think the following example through slowly and carefully. The Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt is told in the Bible as a straightforward, factual, historic event. Charlton Heston, in his narration of the picturesque Bible video series, presents the Bible as part of the “oral tradition in storytelling” as if teachings passed on orally were understood to be less accurate or reliable and therefore merely legends and myths. Socrates, in Plato’s Dialogue “Phaedrus,” addresses the subject of oral versus written history.

“Theuth [Thoth] … was the inventor of many arts, … but his great discovery was the use of letters. … Thammus [the god Ammon] was the king of … Egypt; …To him came Theuth … desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of [his inventions]; … when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; … Thamus replied: … you … attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this … will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, … they will trust to the external written characters … This is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, … not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”4

Plutarch, in his discourse on the life of Lycurgus and his rule in ancient Greece, expresses the belief that oral tradition is a way of making the law more firmly fixed in the mind.

“None of his laws were put into writing by Lycurgus, indeed, one of the so-called “rhetras” forbids it. For he thought that if the most important and binding principles which conduce to the prosperity and virtue of a city were implanted in the habits and training of its citizens, they would remain unchanged and secure, having a stronger bond than compulsion in the fixed purposes imparted to the young by education, which performs the office of a law-giver for every one of them.”5

There is considerable disagreement about whether the Scriptures were in some part orally communicated before being written down. The point is that even if they were it does not make them less authoritative or reliable. Socrates may not be entirely justified in discounting the value of written records but he reinforces the point that oral communication of history does not make it unreliable or inaccurate. Memorizing and passing on history demands great discipline and does not result in a form of the child’s game “gossip.”

Gossip, sometimes called Telephone or other names, consists of a group made to stand in a line. The first person in line is given a piece of paper on which is written a phrase to whisper into the ear of the second person. Frequently there is only one opportunity to whisper the message. The second person whispers what he heard to the third, and so on down the line. The last person is to write down or speak aloud what he heard the person before him say. When the final form of the “gossip” message is made public, frequently it bears little resemblance to the original phrase. The distortion of the oral message in the game gossip is simply due to the indifference of the people playing the game. In fact, one simple change in the rules of the game of gossip produces correct transmission of the message even by children. Simply offer everyone who is playing a large enough reward, or punishment, if the final message is correct.

Modern prisoners of war, inmates in prison, gang members, spies and others today pass on important information without writing it down and without changing the message. Most American Indian tribes had no written language and saw no need for one, until Europeans demonstrated the ability to talk to people far away. In the popular TV series Mission: Impossible, the leader of the team received his orders on a recording that self-destructed after he had heard it one time. He was forced to memorize the mission immediately or he would be unable to complete it.

In the Scriptures, the Exodus is not recorded as a “story” which only “contains” truth. The Exodus is recorded as an historic event like WWII, Benjamin Franklin hearing George Whitfield preach or the invention of the steam engine.

The established religion of secular humanism would single out the invention of the steam engine as the only scientific fact included in these historic events. The word science, however, means something has been correctly observed and accurately recorded under controlled circumstances. For an event or experiment to be a scientific fact it must normally be reproducible. There are exceptions to this, however. The explosion of a supernova is a scientific fact, though no one on earth knows of any way to reproduce that explosion. And even though some of the information recorded about WWII is incorrect information, the historic fact of WWII is also a scientific fact. In fact, WWII is probably the most well recorded fact of history. The abundance of evidence allows modern observers to cross reference records to make a true scientific picture of WWII. Benjamin Franklin’s observations are just as scientific.

“He [Whitefield] … preach’d one evening from the top of the Court-house steps, which are in the middle of Market-street, … I had the curiosity to learn how far he could be heard, … I found his voice distinct till I came near Front-street… Imagining then a semi-circle, … fill’d with auditors, to each of whom I allow’d two square feet, I computed that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand. This reconcil’d me to the newspaper accounts of his having preach’d to twenty-five thousand people … and to the antient histories of generals haranguing whole armies, of which I had sometimes doubted.”6

On the other hand, Benjamin Franklin’s observations of George Whitfield’s preaching were the scientific measurements of a single observer. Though a single observer, even a careful one like Benjamin Franklin, might be more prone to error than a large number of observers, Franklin’s measurements were still scientific. Franklin used a step-by-step process of investigation. He physically walked off the distance to determine the range of Whitfield’s voice. Next he compared his observation with previous witnesses of Whitfield’s audiences and range. Finally he adds similar established historic accounts of commanders addressing troops (adding that he previously doubted their truth).

In the following paragraph the Bible presents step-by step scientific proofs of the accuracy of the historical event of the Exodus. Three hundred years after the event Jephthah confirms its occurrence (Judges 11:26). At the time of the beginning of Solomon’s temple construction the official historical record of the event (I Kings 6:1) confirms that 480 years have passed. If someone falsely claims that the Biblical record of the Exodus is not scientific, that is an issue of his unbelief, not an issue of science.

In the book of Judges, part of Jephthah’s speech to the Ammonites includes an approximate date for the Exodus. …Israel dwelt in Heshbon and her towns, and in Aroer and her towns, and in all the cities that be along by the coasts of Arnon, three hundred years? why therefore did ye not recover them within that time? (Judges 11:26, KJV) By the time of Solomon, the date of the Exodus was the foundational date for the kingdom. And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD. (I Kings 6:1, KJV) Though the comparison of modern calendars with ancient calendars is very difficult and it is easy to be a few years off, I Kings 6:1 gives a precise date to the Exodus. Anyone who understands that Solomon began to build the house of the LORD in 966 BC of our Gregorian calendar knows that the Exodus took place in 1446 BC according to our Gregorian calendar. If you are interested in understanding these discrepancies, please see the Section Two Appendix on Calendars. Anyone who uses a slightly different date, such as 1444 BC or 1447 BC is not disagreeing about the date of the Exodus. He is simply disagreeing about the proper method of scientifically reconciling ancient calendars to our modern Gregorian calendar. Clearly this documentation of the Exodus is scientific history, actual events recorded and verified by scientific methods.

The believer understands that the Exodus took place in 1446 BC. In this case the word believer does not mean someone who has put his faith and trust in Jesus Christ. It simply means that he has examined the evidence and chosen to accept the facts. For example, Immanuel Velikovsky, author of numerous works on errors in the currently accepted dating methods of mainstream archaeology, believes the Exodus took place at the time recorded in the Bible, even though he rejects everything supernatural.

The unbeliever, however, does not understand that an Exodus ever took place. He simply rejects anything like the Biblical record. In other aspects of his life he may be a Hindu, a Muslim, an atheist or almost anything else. He looks at the work of Egyptologists since James Breasted’s Ancient Records of Egypt and concludes that nothing like the Exodus recorded in the Bible ever happened. Mainstream history has no room for anything like the Exodus. A belief in the Exodus will keep doctoral candidates from receiving their doctorates, PhDs from getting a job, prevent professors from achieving tenure and will blacklist tenured professors. A brief look at a few people who have experienced some of this prejudice is documented in Ben Stein’s movie Expelled.7

The compromiser examines the Exodus recorded in the Bible and the massive works of mainstream historians and attempts to reconcile them. Though it is possible for as many reconciled dates as there are individuals doing the reconciling, the most common date compromisers arrive at is 1295 BC. The 1295 BC date often makes Rameses II the pharaoh of the Exodus, as in the Stephen Spielberg movie, Prince of Egypt and the 1956 classic Cecil DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. The 1295 BC date is a poor fit and is often ridiculed by mainstream historians who completely reject anything like an Exodus. Though it is the best fit these men can come up with, it is still wrong. As Charles Haddon Spurgeon said:

“A chasm is opening between the men who believe their Bibles and the men who are prepared for an advance upon Scripture. Inspiration and speculation cannot long abide in peace. Compromise there can be none. We cannot hold the inspiration of the Word, and yet reject it; we cannot believe in the atonement and deny it; we cannot hold the doctrine of the fall and yet talk of the evolution of spiritual life from human nature; we cannot recognize the punishment of the impenitent and yet indulge the “larger hope.” One way or the other we must go. Decision is the virtue of the hour.”8

Compromisers want to “get along,” to make allowances for other views, to be tolerant. They won’t stand up for the truth because it doesn’t matter enough to them. These are people who believe that “getting along” is more important than honesty. Dorothy Sayer said, “In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”9

Though massive tomes have been written on date of the Exodus, that is not the purpose of this work. The Exodus is but one example of the three possible positions of belief, unbelief and compromise. A juror for an automobile accident can be a believer, an unbeliever or a compromiser. A juror who makes a decision based on the evidence of the case alone is a believer. A juror who rejects the evidence and draws conclusions based on some other preconception is an unbeliever. A juror who combines evidence with preconceptions and jumbles it all together into a mess is a compromiser. We are all compromisers on issues where we fail to stand firmly on principle. Compromise is the most destructive thing we can do to our character. Yet as destructive as compromise is, it is an area in each of our lives that we have difficulty seeing clearly.

Throughout history, unbelief has taken many forms. In the Roman Empire the main form of unbelief was polytheism and Christians were viewed as atheists because they believed in only one God. Christianity was dangerous as a “foreign superstition,” and its followers “notoriously depraved,” said Tacitus, first and second century Roman historian.10Suetonius, a second century Roman historian, called Christianity a “new and mischievous religious belief,”11in his work The Twelve Caesars. In Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations Christians are called a “gang… of ignorant men and credulous women.” He believed they were guilty of lawlessness, or “mere contumacy.”12 Athenagoras, an Athenian who wrote to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, said that Romans accused Christians of “atheism, Thyestean feasts [cannibalism], [and] Oedipodean intercourse [incest].”13

Justin Martyr, a second century Christian apologist, acknowledged the Roman perspective but made the Christian position clear to those who ignorantly or willfully misinterpreted it. “Hence are we called atheists. And we confess that we are atheists, so far as gods of this sort [the Roman pantheon] are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God…”14Athenagoras pleaded with Marcus Aurelius to recall that every nation under Roman control was allowed to worship its own gods. Romans believed their vassal states were made better by religious practice, but Athenagoras said that Christians were “harassed, plundered, and persecuted, the multitude making war upon us for our name alone.”13

The Romans founded this empire-wide persecution of Christians upon the charge of Atheism, since Christians were not pantheists like the Romans. But beneath the mask of the worship of many gods, the Romans held the same beliefs Secular Humanists hold today.

Unbelief can take different forms in different cultures. In Japan it was emperor worship; other cultures have even degenerated into cannibalism. But the predominant form of unbelief in the world today is Secular Humanism. We use the term “Secular Humanist” or “Secular Humanism” because that is what they called themselves. The Humanist Manifesto I is a religious document, written by a Unitarian Minister, Raymond B. Bragg, in 1933. Thirty men who believed themselves to be representative of a vast multitude “forging a new philosophy” signed it. “… there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9, KJV)

The Humanist Manifesto I,II and III can be viewed on the website americanhumanist.org. It cannot be reprinted here because of the following notice on the site:

Copyright renewed 1973 by the American Humanist Association. Permission to reproduce this material, complete and unmodified, in electronic or printout form is hereby granted free of charge by the copyright holder to nonprofit humanist and freethought publications. All other uses, and uses by all others, requires that requests for permission be made through the American Humanist Association.15

These men quickly learned that using the word “religion” actually hampered their cause. If they could deceive people into believing that secular humanism was not a religion and that religion was bad, then they could get state funding (follow the money trail) and political power while putting ungodly restrictions on those who actually dared to call themselves religious. Humanist Manifestos II and III call traditional religions “traditional theism” and describe them as “obstacles to human progress.” Many have also dropped the word “secular” and simply call themselves “humanists.”This is an effective propaganda technique, since they are now denying that they are a religion.

The 1973 Humanist Manifesto II is lengthy and filled with doublespeak. It is exactly what George Orwell in 1984 and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World warned us about. It is important because it was signed by more than one hundred influential people, including doctors, university professors, and others like Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer, B. F. Skinner, Prof. of Psychology, Harvard University, Betty Friedan, Founder of N.O.W, and Sir Julian Huxley, former head, UNESCO, Great Britain. All the manifesto texts can be viewed online. Humanist Manifesto III is the most seductive. True intentions are cleverly obscured and it sounds very good. As commentator Bill O’Reilly points out, the term Secular Humanist is not very accurate. It is, however, the oldest and most accurate of the labels they have chosen for themselves.

It is also the term used in court documents, including the US Supreme Court, so we will continue to use it. “Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others.”16Justice Black based his comments on the 1957 case of Fellowship of Humanity v. County of Alameda. In this case an organization of humanists sought a tax exemption on the ground that they used their property “solely and exclusively for religious worship.” The court ruled that the activities of Fellowship of Humanity entitled it to an exemption. These activities included weekly Sunday meetings. The Fellowship of Humanity case used the word humanism, not secular humanism.16

Secular Humanism also made a separate manifesto, first published in 1980 as A Secular Humanist Declaration by CODESH (Council for Democratic Secular Humanism) co-authored by Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson, both editors of The Humanist magazine. Its principle purpose was to declare its compatibility with democracy and how enlightened man should view traditional religions as inferior to secular humanism.

Still, …there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9, NIV). Plato praised many of these same follies in his dialogue The Republic. Since Plato is so verbose, few study him in detail today, which is good. Where Aldous Huxley in Brave New World and George Orwell in 1984 viewed the following principles as deplorable, Plato praised them as necessary. His philosopher king would use thugs he called guardians to enforce the will of the legislators on a hapless society divided into classes. Plato’s philosopher/king together with legislators and guardians would determine what the classes would be and who would belong to which class. The class you belonged to would determine every aspect of your life.

But Secular Humanism is older than Plato. It is older than anything written which is still in existence. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9, NIV). Contrary to scientific facts, the modern version of the religion of Secular Humanism believes that a simple, chaotic universe evolved into

a complex, ordered universe. To oversimplify, everything came from nothing. Secular Humanists deny that they are a religion for the express purpose of attacking all other religions, collecting tax money and obtaining political power. They also deny that same political power to anyone who disagrees with them. As no two Christians, Jews, Taoists, etc. believe exactly the same way, so no two Secular Humanists believe the same thing. Despite their differences, Secular Humanists hold many beliefs in common.

People who hold beliefs in common can be labeled by those common beliefs. For example, the Niagara Bible Conference is where the term Fundamentalism first began to be used. The term was also used to describe “The Fundamentals,” a collection of twelve books funded by Milton and Lyman Stewart. These men collected as many addresses of Christian teachers, preachers and other leaders as they could find. They published the books and sent them to these addresses over a period of time ending around 1910. This group of beliefs became known as Fundamentalism. Fundamentalists defined their beliefs so clearly that anyone willing to be called a Fundamentalist told others something about what they believe.17The term Fundamentalist, however, applies to every aspect of life. A football coach who emphasizes the basics of blocking and tackling as opposed to trick plays or a wide open offence like the West Coast offence is known as a Fundamentalist. An architect who designs simple, inexpensive buildings using the basics of engineering is a Fundamentalist. And a believer in the following list of fundamentals for Secular Humanism makes a person a Fundamentalist in Secular Humanism.

The Fundamentals of Secular Humanism

1.Secular Humanism is a religion based on feelings and emotion, not reason.

2.Secular Humanism denies anything non-material. Anything spiritual is redefined as “energy.” Various humanists use terms such as “Life Energy,” “Life-Force,” “Interdimensional Energy,” etc. The source of the energy is always material or natural, not supernatural.

3.Secular Humanism denies the existence of a supreme being including Intelligent Design.

4.While acknowledging the existence of evil it denies the concept of original sin. It believes in the perfectibility of man.

5.Though Secular Humanism is open to things not yet discovered, at this time there is no scientific evidence for life after death.

6.Man’s existence on the Earth, like everything else in the universe, is a result of chance and not a plan. The most likely explanation for this chance is evolution, which is based on uniformitarianism.

7.Secular Humanism demands that science include only what is within the scope of “natural law” but does not allow for any explanation for the origin of natural law, and therefore the origins of matter or energy; nor is there any reliable information on a possible end to the universe.

9.The purpose of life is to make you a better person. This is accomplished by service to others and seeking

fulfillment in this life. Though each person might have a different concept of fulfillment, no one has the right to tell another person that what he is doing is wrong, unless it harms someone else. This is especially true with sexual gratification.

10. The accumulated improvements of many individuals will drive the evolution of the human race.

11. The best way for society to survive and thrive is to allow enlightened leaders complete freedom to guide all institutions and organizations that serve all people from the beginning to the end of life.

12. Man exists only as a member of the world community. The world community is responsible to provide for the protection and guidance of the enlightened society from the earliest age. Children must not be separated from the world community. Any persons of majority age who oppose the ideals of the world community must be forced into conformity through employment sanctions or reeducation. Opposition must be suppressed by any necessary means.

13. Improvement of society is the essential duty of the enlightened guardians and includes guidance to prevent nonproductive, undesirable or inferior types.

14. Enlightened leaders guide others to fulfillment in this life. The community chooses the values of these enlightened leaders. The enlightened leaders help to guide the community in developing their values system.

15. Compulsory education indoctrinates the citizen of the world community. It is the catechism of the new society.

16. Personal property is evil. This includes any type of marriage since marriage is a property arrangement. Since Secular Humanists recognize evil, it is the responsibility of the guardians to supervise the distribution of material possessions, including social contracts. Individuals corrupt material possessions by unnecessarily hoarding them.

17. National sovereignty is the cause of war, poverty, overpopulation, and waste or destruction of resources. A unified world government is essential to stable economics and freedom in the areas of communication, travel, arts, sciences and education.

18. Unity means eradication of opposition. Secular Humanists characterize anyone who differs from them on these fundamentals as opponents. Opponents are characterized as being oppressive, divisive, fearful of change, bigoted or guilty of hatred.

Some of these items may seem extreme, even to those who claim to be humanists. Some will protest, “I don’t believe that!” As was said before, not all humanists believe all these points exactly in these words. The position of the Secular Humanists has been evolving over millennia, not just centuries, and in the next chapters some surprising adherents will come to light. Prepare to hear from people who lived in times when they could see and touch the gods the state demanded they worship, yet their words produced the echoes secularists proclaim today as “new ideas for new times.” Look for parallels of these “modern” beliefs in the words of ancient writers who were required by law to believe in the gods of Sumeria, Babylonia, Egypt, India, Meso-America, Greece and Rome. They still spoke clearly about how they had already forged their own beliefs with man as his own prophet, priest and object of worship. Moving closer to modern times, hundreds of well-known humanists will make it clear that those who are influencing every aspect of our culture have believed these concepts for centuries and do, in fact, believe them and work for their realization today.

16 Torcaso v. Watkins,United States Supreme Court, 1961, Justice Hugo Black in a footnote. Justice Black based his comments on the 1957 case of Fellowship of Humanity v. County of Alameda. Where an organization of humanists sought a tax exemption on the ground that they used their property “solely and exclusively for religious worship.”

17 More detailed information on the Niagara Bible Conference and the Fundamentals can be found in the following sources: Ahlstrom.Sydney F. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972; Beale, David O. In Pursuit of Purity. Bob Jones University Press: Greenville, SC, 1986; Dollar, George W. A History of Fundamentalism in America. Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1973.

All quotes, unless otherwise noted, are by Stephen Hawking from his book A Brief History of Time.

“A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.”

“Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis; you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.”

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works.”

“If they will not believe you (Moses) or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe the witness of the last sign. But if they will not believe even these two signs or heed what you say, then you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground; and the water which you take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.” Exodus 3: 8,9 NASB

In the Bible the word belief means intellectually examining the evidence, and accepting the evidence. The Bible uses the word belief the same way we think of a juror examining the evidence. The juror votes according to what he believes about the evidence. Actively following up on that evidence is faith and passively following up on the evidence is trust.

Anyone can examine evidence, come to certain conclusions about that evidence and believe that their conclusions are correct. Orville and Wilber Wright believed that a heavier than air machine could fly. Their faith in that belief built an airplane. After building the airplane, they trusted in what they built and flew it. Our beliefs can be incorrect. We can place our faith in things which are not true. We can trust in things which are not true and people who will let us down.

The difference between the religion of Stephen Hawking and the Bible is absolute truth. The Bible claims to be absolute truth. Though few people today believe that it is absolute truth, all honest people know that it claims to be absolute truth. The religion of Secular Humanism demands that there is no absolute truth.

A very tiny number of people ever gain access to the multimillion-dollar equipment necessary for modern physics experiments. Only a tiny number of that tiny number are privileged enough to set up and run their own experiments. Of these who run their own experiments, very few ever see the experiments of others. These physicists are trusting in the records of others. They believe that the total sum of the experiments performed worldwide will reduce or eliminate error. They have faith in the peer review process.

They also believe, with a dogmatic faith, that the records of the Bible are untrue, or at least unscientific. Yet the historic record of Moses meets every test for science. It has multiple, credible witnesses. It was repeated. It can be falsified. It accurately predicted the future. It is based on observation and reason, Men reject Moses, not because of science, but because their religion is opposed to Moses.

“What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the Word of Life.” 1 John 1:1. NASB This is both scientific and legal testimony. John is either telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth or he is lying.

The scientific information of the Bible records that the processes which govern the universe today are different from the processes which brought the universe and life on this planet into existence. These records are as scientific as the photographic plate which record the collision of antimatter with matter. As anyone can mistrust or disbelieve the photographic plate, or the interpretation of the information on that plate, so we can mistrust or disbelieve the scientific information recorded in the Bible.

Secular Humanists believe that the miracles of Moses were not scientific because they cannot duplicate them today. Yet these same men believe in peer-reviewed studies which they cannot duplicate, such as a supernova. The only difference is that they believe in the results of these studies, while they reject the historic accounts of Moses.

The scientific records of Moses have no less authority than the peer-reviewed studies produced today. The basic difference is the information. Modern peer-reviewed studied usually have false conclusions for the primary content. The actual scientific data is usually contained in footnotes, appendices and attachments. In the published articles the conclusions usually lead. I believe the reason for this common layout is the difficulty very educated men have understanding how the available data supports their conclusions.

By contrast, the scientific data in the Bible is clearly laid out. From the beginning of the Bible we must simply choose to believe or reject the clearly laid out evidence of the witnesses. The data in the Bible is scientific.

“I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.” Charles Darwin1“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” John Adams2“In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore … in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long … seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. … There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” Mark Twain3

Samuel Johnson said, “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”4 Christians often believe that science is an enemy. They think this way because most who use the word “science” have completely abandoned Johnson’s demand that integrity go hand-in-hand with knowledge. Uniformitarians replace truth with selective evidence which supports preconceived conclusions. Christians should neither develop an antagonism toward true science, nor should they ignore the very real contributions of true science. True scientists should not ignore the very real foundation of science in Christianity. Dennis Prager, author, columnist, radio show host and historian, laments the unthinking reliance on pseudo-science in today’s society.

“In much of the West, the well-educated have been taught to believe they can know nothing and they can draw no independent conclusions about truth, unless they cite a study and ‘experts’ have affirmed it. ‘Studies show’ is to the modern secular college graduate what ‘Scripture says’ is to the religious fundamentalist.”5

In everyday life, probably the greatest area of conflict between Christianity and those who misuse the word science is moral relativism. This came about because of the dishonest use of the word relativity. The theories of relativity (special and general) neither support nor have any reference to moral relativism. The similarity in the sound of the words is simply a propaganda technique. Neither do the moral absolutes of the Word of God belittle true science. However, since the established religion of Secular Humanism teaches just the opposite, the following list of scientific facts can help us understand that true science can only be explained by the world as described in the Bible. None of these scientific facts prove the Bible. Each does prove the religious belief in Deep Time to be a scientific impossibility.

Sun Energy Source Until shortly after WWII, the majority of scientists believed the sun shrank by an average of .01 percent per year. They concluded, based on 400 years’ worth of scientific observations, that this was proof that the sun was powered by gravitational collapse. In the late 1800s the Kelvin–Helmholtz Contraction Theory was developed to explain both the observed contraction and how the sun was powered.6

In the 1930s religious Secular Humanists, understanding the consequences of this theory, proposed nuclear fusion as the energy source for the sun. In 1928 George Gamow published a paper proposing a theory. The Gamow theory included what came to be known as the Gamow factor.7 This was the first serious step toward the idea that stars are powered by nuclear fusion. General acceptance was slow. Gamow’s ideas were further explored in the 1930s. This exploration grew into Hans Bethe’s theory of Stellar Nucleosynthesis.8 Bethe won a Nobel Prize for this work in 1967. The detonation of the atomic bombs actually did more to convince people than the theoretical papers. According to the Kelvin-Helmoltz Contraction Theory, with gravitational collapse powering the sun, the sun would have been so large and hot around 50,000 years ago that it would have boiled all the water out of all the oceans on the earth. A mere million years ago the orbit of the earth would have been inside the sun.9

These are not just creationist rantings. While we might disagree about the exact numbers, there is no questioning the basic principle. Here are the words of very committed uniformitarians.

“But Kelvin–Helmholtz contraction cannot be the major source of the Sun’s energy today. If it were, the Sun would have had to be much larger in the relatively recent past. Helmholtz’s own calculations showed that the Sun could have started its initial collapse from the solar nebula no more than about 2.5 million years ago. But the geological and fossil record shows that the earth is far older than that, and so the Sun must be as well. Hence, this model of a Sun that shines because it shrinks cannot be correct.”10

Why is the Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction incorrect? Because they believe “that the earth is far older than that.”

Secularists’ religious belief that life on earth has existed for billions of years required the sun to be billions of years old. So they eagerly accepted that the sun was powered by nuclear fusion. It is also true that the sun’s surface is not static, as is the case with water, rock, or ice on a planet’s surface, so a consistent measurement of the sun’s diameter is not possible. Two different measurements on the same day might yield different diameters because of massive fluctuations on the sun.

The sun’s life cycle in this theory would be 9.2 billion years. At 4.6 billion years the sun would be roughly half way through its life cycle. The problem with this theory is that the sun would have been too cool; forty percent of its present brightness, 4.6 billion years ago, and the earth would have been a frozen wasteland. This is also known as the early faint sun paradox.

Project SOHO, launched in 1995, has provided us with more information about the sun. Unwilling to change their belief about the age of the sun and life on earth, some Secular Humanists now believe that the sun is powered by a perfect balance of different types of nuclear fusion combined with gravitational collapse, which has produced a uniform temperature for life on earth for the last 4.6 billion years. The best way to describe this kind of balance is “miraculous.”11

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory Satellite, or SDO, was launched in February 2010 and chief scientist Dean Pesnell said it has already reshaped our theories of how the star works.12

ScienceBlogs.com contributor Ethan Siegal, PhD in theoretical astrophysics at the University of Florida, writes a blog called “Starts with a Bang.” In a post titled, “How the Sun works, from the inside out”, originally written August 12, 2011 he has included crossed out and updated information, indicating how rapidly information changes. Theories about the sun must be changed, updated, and corrected to match the most up-to-date information.13

Many who insist on billions of years agree that 4.6 billion years is just a rough estimate. They explain that the 9.2 billion year figure is correct, but that they simply are not certain how far our sun is into its 9.2 billion year lifecycle. With such rapid changes in information, how is it possible to state dogmatically that the sun has a lifespan of 9.2 billion years?

Radiohalos and Radiometric Dating The 4.6 billion year figure comes from radiometric dating. The most common radiohalos are found in zircons. Zircons are found all over the earth and range in size from microscopic to the size of rocks. Zircons are crystals of zirconium silicate. Zircons can be of gemstone quality and large zircons are often used as substitutes for diamonds (cubic zirconia is a close man-made synthetic). Most zircons, however, are around the size of very small grains of sand. Though the wide range of impurities creates an enormous variety of zircons, the most important geological use for zircons is radiometric dating. Zircons contain trace amounts of uranium and thorium. Tiny zircons are sliced open to examine fission tracks produced by decaying uranium. These fission tracks and the U–>Pb (Uranium to lead) methods of radiometric dating have dated zircons as old as 4.404 billion years.14 This means, according to uniformitarian assumptions, that the original crystal formation of these tested zircon samples occurred 4.404 billion years ago. As with all radiometric samples, there is no scientific way of knowing the original condition of the sample tested.

The same zircons also contain helium, which provides another dating method. Helium retention rates in these zircons have a date range beginning as young as 4,000 years.14 While there are a tremendous number of articles attacking this date as too young, most of these articles read like tabloids reporting on British royalty, not honest science. A true scientist would look for an explanation that accounted for both the uranium radiohalos and helium retention. It is far easier to come up with an explanation for the radiohalos’ presence if the rocks have a young age. It is nearly impossible to explain the retained helium if the rocks are ancient. One possible explanation for young radiohalos is that they were created at the same time the earth was created.

Another possible answer is that a massive thermonuclear event such as the sun exploding and losing an outer layer sent thermonuclear radiation through the entire planet. Since such an event would have destroyed all non-aquatic life on earth, this would have happened around 2350 BC, at the time of the flood.

Whatever the trigger, the most likely scenario is accelerated nuclear decay during the flood. The accelerated nuclear decay during the flood is the only explanation we are aware of which properly balances all the existing evidence.

Dating Rock Formations Travel anywhere and you will see signs proclaiming various rocks or layers of rocks to be millions or even billions of years old. “The Little Willow Formation consists primarily of contorted quartz schist and gneiss; at 1.7 billion years old, it is the oldest rock in the Salt Lake City area.”15

This religious belief in the myth of great ages is proclaimed in textbooks, school classrooms, museums, and, most importantly, by employers, who will either refuse to hire or actually fire anyone who refuses to openly support this religious myth. Though many supposed scientific facts are used to support these dates, radiometric dating is the foundation for all dating methods.16

Since fossils have no direct methods of dating, such as radiometric dating, how is the age of a particular fossil determined? It is compared to other fossils of a “known” age or it is dated according to strata where it was found. How is the age of the other fossils or the strata determined? The usual answer is more fossils of a “known” age or strata of a “known” age. This circular reasoning is standard textbook content. Radiometric dating is the only dating method that does not rely on a comparison with something else already dated. Radiometric dating is not valid on fossils. Radiometric dating must be used on the rocks in the surrounding strata.

Every form of radiometric dating always depends on an unstable radioactive isotope deteriorating (decaying) to a stable isotope at a known, stable rate. K–>Ar (Potassium to Argon) and U–>Pb (235U to Lead) are just two examples of isotopes used as radiometric clocks. All radioactive isotopes used as radiometric clocks work the same way. A sample is taken and analyzed. The result is always a ratio of radioactive isotope to the stable final element. The ratio can be found on a chart because the rate of decay is stable, that is, unaffected by any known outside influence.

Everyone who uses radioactive isotopes as clocks must, however, rely on three invalid religious assumptions. The first is the unscientific religious leap of faith that the sample being tested had no daughter material when it was formed. For radiometric clocks to work, it is an absolutely essential scientific necessity to know the original condition of the sample. If the original condition of the sample is less than one hundred percent radioactive, then the date is less than the published date. These widely publicized dates, however, assume that the tested sample began its existence (at the time it was formed) one hundred per cent radioactive with no daughter element present. In reality, the only scientific information we learn from these radiometric tests is the current ratio of radioactive material to nonradioactive material. The published dates are always the upper possible date of a range of possible dates.

The second assumption is that nothing contaminated the sample during its existence. It is impossible to know the conditions of the sample during its existence. Simply to assume that contamination never occurred is not science. It is especially bad science when the very people claiming the accuracy of radiometric dating also claim that the earth underwent a series of what they call extinction events which catastrophically changed the surface of the earth.

The third assumption is that nothing changed the decay rate. While the second assumption is something changed the individual sample or the immediate environment of the sample, this assumption is worldwide or throughout the universe. In other words, is the present really the key to the past? How can we know that?

If there was a sample with a known date, other samples could be calibrated against it. Not only do such calibration samples not exist, without a time machine to go back in time and obtain a calibration sample, it is not possible to have a calibration sample. With very few exceptions, the published dates of tens of thousands to billions of years are based purely on mythological religious assumptions.

There are a few exceptions, however. Thermoluminescence is used to date pottery. Thermoluminescence is based on the time the pottery was fired, a known event. 14C is another one of these exceptions. The radioactive isotope 14C is integrated into the tissue of living organisms throughout the lifetime of that organism. At the time of death that amount of 14C becomes a fixed amount and begins to radioactively decay into 14N. That amount of 14C at the time of death is equal to the amount of 14C in the atmosphere at the time of death. The ratio of 14C in the sample tested at the time of death compared to the assumed amount of 14C in the atmosphere at the time of death should be an almost perfect radiometric clock. However, certain conditions can alter that ratio. If the ratio is in some way tampered with, that tampering is normally leaching. That particular sample will then test to be older than it really is. 14C dates older than 1000 B.C. also assume atmospheric amounts of 14C and absorption rates of 14C similar to current absorption rates. That is almost certainly an invalid assumption, making many, if not all 14C dates for items dated older than 1000 B.C. older than they actually are.

Finally, radiometric dating never gives an absolute date. It only tells us the upper limit of a range of possible dates. One of the most important but rarely published conclusions by secularists about 14C dating is that even they admit that after approximately 60,000 years, the remaining 14C is such a small amount that it is difficult to test for it. They have also concluded that 14C disappears entirely after a little more than 100,000 years. Though fossils which are pronounced older than 100,000 years are rarely tested for 14C, those few which have been tested usually have some trace of 14C.

“Carbon-14 (14C) dating of multiple samples of bone from 8 dinosaurs from Texas, Alaska, Colorado, and Montana revealed that they are only 22,000 to 39,000 years old.”

“After the AOGS-AGU conference in Singapore, the abstract was removed from the conference website by two chairmen because they could not accept the findings. Unwilling to challenge the data openly, they erased the report from public view without a word to the authors or even to the AOGS officers, until after an investigation. It won’t be restored.

The researchers presented their findings at the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore, August 13-17, a conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS).”17

Lunar Recession “Scotty, I need power now!” pleads a desperate Captain Kirk, on Star Trek the original series, only to hear his Chief Engineer reply, “He’s turned the engines off. Completely cold. Thirty minutes to startup. I canna change the laws of physics, Captain!” The only hope of pulling out of a decaying orbit and saving the Enterprise is a restart of her engines.

Why? The Earth is surrounded by nonpowered satellites. Why does the Enterprise need power? The Enterprise needs to remain in a slow orbit as near the planet as possible while maintaining a fixed point over it. The only way to accomplish that is to keep the engines powered up to constantly change the orbit and counter the pull of gravity. The closer a satellite is to the object it is orbiting, the faster it has to travel to maintain a stable orbit without engine power. Mercury is the fastest-traveling planet orbiting the sun. Venus, Earth and Mars are all progressively slower at their greater distances.

For a given velocity there is only one stable orbit around (distance from) a planet (or sun). The closer the satellite (or starship) is to the object it is orbiting, the faster it needs to travel (without power or thrust). Otherwise it needs power (thrust) to maintain the orbit.

All orbiting objects have one of three types of orbits: 1) The orbit is a decaying orbit (being pulled into the planet), 2) A stable orbit (no change in orbit over time) or 3) A receding orbit (moving away from the planet).

The closer the satellite (or starship) is to the object it is orbiting, the faster it must travel or the more power (thrust) it must use to counteract the attraction of gravity.

The laser reflectors left by the Apollo missions on the lunar surface have been hit with lasers from earth many times. It proves the moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches per year.18 Assuming the Moon has not changed mass, velocity or direction of orbit, sometime in the past it would have possessed a stable orbit closer to the Earth. Even closer to the earth, inside that stable orbit, the moon’s orbit with no change in mass, velocity, or orbital direction, would have decayed.

The important point is the stable or equilibrium orbit.

At the current rate of recession, the moon is receding from the earth at a rate of approximately one mile every 42,240 years. If the Moon were to remain unchanged in mass, velocity and rate of recession, just over 42 million years ago, the moon would be more than one thousand miles closer to the earth. With no change in its mass and velocity, in far less than 42 million years the moon’s orbit would be a decaying orbit, not a receding orbit. The moon would be drawing closer to the Earth and not moving away from the earth as it is now. Just like the Enterprise, the moon would have a decaying orbit.

Since the lunar orbit is receding, not decaying, it means that the existing lunar orbit is, geologically speaking, very young. If you reject the conclusion that this indicates a recent creation, you are left with only two choices: 1) The Moon is a very recent addition to the Earth or 2) Some sort of catastrophe has relatively recently altered the Moon’s orbit. This catastrophe would have required far more energy than what could be produced by the simultaneous detonation of all the nuclear weapons on Earth. That catastrophic event would have occurred quite recently, even according to an Uniformitarian point of view. Any catastrophe powerful enough to alter the moon’s orbit would also have catastrophically affected the Earth as well.

Geomagnetic Field Decay The earth’s magnetic field seems to have a half-life of around 1,400 years. Assuming that to be correct, just 11,200 years ago the earth’s magnetic field would have been 256 times stronger than it is now. 14,000 years ago the earth’s magnetic field would have been 1,024 times stronger than it is now. That would make animal life impossible.19

Dr. Russell Humphreys has continued to work in this field. He believes that a strict linear half-life is unlikely and concludes his article with the following: “These ideas weigh heavily against the idea that there is currently a “dynamo” process at work in the core that would ultimately restore the lost energy back to the field. Without such a restoration mechanism, the field can only have a limited lifetime, in the thousands of years. So the clarity of this new fit, especially the exponential part, is further evidence that the earth’s magnetic field is young.”20

The dynamo process Dr. Humphreys references is the theory that instead of continually decaying, earth’s magnetic field is continually rebuilding or restoring itself. Its existence would make the entire life cycle of the earth’s magnetic field much more stable and therefore much, much older.

Many articles purport to “debunk” these observations. They usually begin with personal attacks on the original authors. Even if the “debunkers” are correct that the half-life of the earth’s magnetic field is longer than 1,400 years, for life to exist hundreds of millions years ago, the half-life must be hundreds of times larger. Instead of making personal attacks, detractors should present data supporting a much longer half-life. Instead, they use data based on the presupposition that the earth is millions of years old to insist that the earth’s magnetic field must have a large half-life.

An excellent response to these uniformitarian proposals is Jonathan Sarfati’s article, The Earth’s Magnetic Field: Evidence That the Earth Is Young. After including many detailed examples, it concludes, “The clear decay pattern shows the earth could not be older than about 10,000 years.”21

A key element of the decay of the earth’s magnetic field is the evidence of magnetic field reversals found in cooled lava flows. “Lava flows in Nevada’s Sheep Creek Range may have preserved evidence that the planet’s magnetic field rapidly changed direction.” Other evidence in the paleomagnetic lava flow at Steens Mountain in Oregon shows that the earth’s magnetic field reversed its polarity in just over two weeks. This is in line with a magnetic field half-life of 1,400 years, but entirely unexplainable with a magnetic field hundreds of millions or billions of years old. Also, the sun reverses the polarity of its magnetic field every eleven years.22

Mount Saint Helens Canyon Formation Though the eruption of this volcano was observed by millions via television, internet and print media, few are aware of the significance. It carved another “Little Grand Canyon” similar to the Grand Canyon in Arizona in days or perhaps only hours. Millions witnessed this event. We saw it happening live or on video in real time. To those who understand, the evidence is so overwhelming that even some evolutionists are admitting it, though quite grudgingly. They still believe, without any evidence, that the catastrophe creating most other prominent geologic sites happened millions of years ago. But the evidence has forced them to admit that the Grand Canyon’s formation was rapid, created with massive amounts of water.23

Varves

Paint brush shows scale. Photo Information/Credit24

Mount Saint Helens produced more scientifically observable evidence, in the form of something remarkably like varves. According to most dictionaries, a varve is a layer of mud at the bottom of a pond or lake. Counting varves used to be considered a very important method of dating. Each layer has two parts, one lighter and the other darker. One part is the time of year when water moves quickly and brings many deposits. The other part is the time of year when water is stationary, perhaps even stagnant, such as the winter when the lake is covered in ice. All honest scientists admit that there might be more than one varve per year. A core sample, which counts varves to determine the age of a lake, might give a date older than the actual date. The assumption that conditions in the past were similar to the present is an assumption that the difference in dates is slight. Though the varve count might be slightly older than the actual date, it is still assumed to be reliable.

The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980 scientifically proved that assumption to be in error. Ash and mud up to twenty-five feet thick with thousands of layers filled the region. Though these layers are never called varves, they display the same characteristics as varves, a thin light and dark layer sandwiched together. These thousands of layers, put down in a matter of hours, perhaps minutes, completely discredit the concept of using layers for dating. People who use varves for dating never acknowledge or even mention this.25

Lake Titicaca Catastrophes change the shape of the land where they occur forever. Few places have been changed more dramatically than Lake Titicaca. It rises 12,500 feet (3,800 meters) above sea level in South America between Bolivia and Peru. Fresh water rivers and streams feed the lake now, but the salt content is about five-and-a-half parts per thousand, classifying the lake as brackish. No current conditions explain the salt content of the lake. The most likely explanation is that Lake Titicaca was once at or below sea level and that a catastrophic uplift moved a lake full of seawater almost two and a half miles above sea level. Marine fossils are preserved around the lake. The current salt level of Lake Titicaca is about fifteen percent of the Pacific Ocean off Peru, where the Pacific Ocean varies from 34 to 37 parts per thousand.

“In the heart of the Andes … is Lake Titicaca.” [Its saltiness and the present fauna (It contains sea horses)] strongly suggested that the present fauna of Lake Titicaca has survived from a time when the lake communicated directly with [was connected to] the ocean.”26

Theories other than uplift have been postulated. These theories, however, require completely speculative processes that have never been observed. That is not a scientific process. Some evolutionists believe the uplift theory because the scientific evidence is so overwhelming, but say that the catastrophe occurred millions of years ago. A past waterline is slanted in relation to the current waterline.

At one time Lake Titicaca had more water than it does now, and this waterline is much higher at one end of the lake, proving that a catastrophe tipped the lake in the past.

“The strandline [near Lake Titicaca] was carefully surveyed for a length of about 375 miles [603 km]. And then it was established that it is not ‘straight.’ … Its level showed a slant of a most peculiar character in relation to the present ocean-level, or, which amounts to the same, relative to the present level of Lake Titicaca.”27

Past irrigation and buildings in and around the lake prove an ancient civilization built the port city of Tiahuanaco. It is approximately 800 feet higher than the current lake surface. Tiahuanaco was a harbor, but is now twelve miles south of the lake, and the ship berths are of a size most likely built for ocean-going vessels. The lake “is large, 3,261 square miles. It contains sea horses, suggesting that this region or its water were once below sea level. On the mountain sides … are terraces of ancient corn fields going up to 17,000 feet. Yet corn will not germinate [sprout] above 11,500 feet!”20 There is also a building beneath the lake, about 660 feet long, with a road running to it and roads and steps leading down into deeper water. It is twice the size of a modern soccer field and modern archaeologists believe it to be a temple.28

Himalayan Yellow Band Ammonites Geological features suddenly and catastrophically created by water can be found all over the world. Near the top of the Himalayan Mountains, reaching up to 29,029 feet (8,848 m) above sea level, is a layer of rock known as the yellow band. This yellow band is filled with marine fossils called ammonites. “Marine fossils are also found high in the Himalayas, the world’s tallest mountain range, reaching up to 29,029 feet (8,848 m) above sea level. For example, fossil ammonites (coiled marine cephalopods) are found in limestone beds in the Himalayas of Nepal. All geologists agree that ocean waters must have buried these marine fossils in these limestone beds.”29

Ammonites are common fossils found all over the earth and are similar to a modern marine creature known as the Nautilus. These fossilized marine creatures lived in oceans, not a freshwater lake. All of the Himalayan mountain chain had to have been under seawater. This many fossilized ammonites were not transported somehow after the mountains were formed. Sometime in the past either the entire Himalayan Mountain chain was five miles lower than it is now or the entire planet had more than twice the water volume than it has now.

Also, these ammonite fossils are not crushed. They were moved by a catastrophic (sudden) event while the entire layer was plastic (mud). The ammonites had to be protected to keep them from being crushed. The only scientific answer is that the surrounding mud protected them. A slow uplift over a long period of time would have dried out the surrounding mud. Instead of protecting the ammonites, the hardened rock would have ground the ammonites to powder. Since water weighs approximately eight pounds per gallon, the energy necessary to create the Himalayan Mountains was thousands of times greater than all the nuclear weapons in all the nuclear arsenals in every country on earth detonating at the same time.

On a much smaller scale, highway engineers have carved into mountains all over the earth. Thousands of mountains at every possible elevation all over the earth show bent, folded and twisted layers intact without cracks. These layers had to be plastic [mud] when they were put in place. This is the only way these mountains could have formed.

Catastrophic Fossil Formation

Fossils like the ammonites of the yellow band were formed in a catastrophic event. Even evolutionists have to admit that. Insects, microbes and weathering combine to destroy everything except bones in less than one hundred years, often in less than a week. Tissue deteriorates too rapidly for fossilization without a catastrophe. The question is: When did this catastrophe occur? Once again, the only available scientific evidence indicates a more recent event. Since fossils were bones, they once contained 14C. If a standard test for 14C discovered any 14C, the tested sample would scientifically prove a date less than 60,000 years old.

Since the religion of Secular Humanism demands that these fossils are millions of years old, and they control both the fossils to be tested and the testing procedures, 14C testing is never done on fossils. There is only the dogmatic assertion that fossils are now stone and there is no carbon to test.

There have been carbon tests on mollusks that indicate a much younger date on certain samples. Without 14C testing, however, there is no scientific dating of fossils, only religious pronouncements.30

Warm Antarctica

There is abundant evidence that Antarctica was once warm. Warm climate animal and plant fossils abound. Antarctica also has a coal bed. Formation of a coal bed requires a massive number of warm climate plants. The ice core samples have discovered that many of these fossils are below sea level.31

The question is, why? Possible explanations include that Antarctica was once in a warmer latitude and moved, or that the magnetic poles have shifted (as mentioned earlier), or that the oceans have changed dramatically. The facts are clear. A once warm-climate land mass now lies beneath ice three miles thick in spots. The common thread through all of these explanations is the scientific fact of a catastrophic change. Sadly, instead of completely scientific explanations, supposed scientific and academic articles lead off with dogmatic mythological assertions: “around 40 million years ago,” “millions of years ago,” “40,000 year cycles.”

A catastrophe could turn Antarctica from a warm climate into a frozen wasteland very quickly. The articles describing Antarctica’s past might have much correct scientific data, but these dogmatic mythological foundational assertions make the entire article read like something from a tabloid.

Ice Core Samples and Glacier Girl Researchers annually take core samples of glaciers and massive ice caps such as those covering Antarctica. They count each layer as a single year and publish a date. As with radiometric dating, it is not possible to know the original condition of the ice cap or glacier. However, unlike radiometric dating, starting with a zero condition (no ice, bare ground) is reasonable. Assuming that the earth is older than the glacier or ice cap is also reasonable. So the speed with which a glacier or ice cap forms is critical to an accurate date.

A squadron of P-38s made an emergency landing on a glacier in Greenland on July 15, 1942. The pilots were rescued and the planes abandoned. On July 15, 1992, the final piece of one P-38 was dug out of the glacier. For 50 years the squadron of planes had flowed with the glacier while being covered with more ice. One plane was pulled out of the glacier more than two miles from the landing point, buried in 268 feet of ice. The recovered plane was restored and renamed Glacier Girl.32

If the same techniques which boldly pronounce with absolute certainty that core samples are tens of thousands of years old were applied to the ice which covered Glacier Girl, then that ice would have to be thousands of years old. Yet the scientific fact is that Glacier Girl was covered by 268 feet of ice. It is also a scientific fact that this ice was fifty years old. This particular glacier grew at a rate of almost 5.5 feet per year. At this rate, the thickest ice sheet in the world, Terre Adelie in Antarctica, could be formed in just over 2,500 years. Secular Humanists would insist that different conditions in the past required a much longer formation time. Any change in the conditions could just as easily have resulted in a shorter time for formation.

Besides counting the layers in core samples, methods of dating a glacier include testing the oxygen content of the water, studying the presence of CO2, finding evidence of radioactive decay, and examining pieces of volcanic material. Fred Hall wrote a brief article, “Ice Cores Not All That Simple,”33 showing how complicated glaciers really are. None of these methods are entirely reliable. While there have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of computer and theoretical models developed to explain glacier formation, the only scientific observations are in line with the glacier which covered Glacier Girl.

Water Scale Formations like the Grand Canyon were carved by water action. No one disputes this, but water action is a topic on which scientists can still find points of disagreement.

Anyone who has watched a movie from the 1950s or earlier has seen the common, at that time, technique of filming a scale model ship in a tank of water. Even with rather large ships, such as the ones used in Ben Hur, the water never looks quite real. The explanation is that water does not scale, that is, large amounts of water look and behave differently than smaller amounts of water. For realistic water, producers and directors had to either build full sized models or wait decades for 3-D animation.

Since water does not scale visually, scale models using water were believed to be inaccurate also. For example, water can cut channels through layers of mud. The resulting canyons look something like a scale model of the Grand Canyon. These models have been dismissed as unrealistic simply because water does not scale. This idea that water does not scale, however, is not always true. Bridges built in powerful rivers, especially rivers prone to flooding, are often washed away. Engineers building a new bridge over the Mississippi River at Alton, IL, between 1990 and 1994, built a scale model to help prevent that from happening. The scale model they built used real water to examine the direction and amount of force the Mississippi River would exert on the new bridge.34

Though the water did not “look” to scale, the water flow and pressure information was accurate enough to allow the engineers to see what forces they had to contend with. Because of the model, modifications were made in the bridge’s design. These modifications are likely the reason the bridge is still standing today.

Water Salinity The study of water and its properties gives scientists many ways to learn about the earth. It is also a very much-abused study when it comes to dating the earth. One of the most unusual methods of dating is measuring the salt content of the sea. This method assumes a constant and steady addition of salt to the sea by freshwater rivers and a constant and steady evaporation rate.35

While this method is often cited in textbooks as one of many dating methods “proving” an ancient earth, it is fraught with so many difficulties that it has few educated defenders. It is usually referred to as an “additional” or “support” method of dating.

The first major scientific problem with using the salt content of the sea as a dating method is the wide disparity in salt content among the world’s bodies of water. The Mediterranean Sea has a much higher salt content than the Atlantic, which has a higher salt content than the Antarctic. Is the Mediterranean older than the rest of the oceans of the world? Are the rivers that flow into the Mediterranean saltier than the rest of the rivers of the world? The scientific answer to both of these questions is either “no” or “we do not know”.

People have attempted to date the seas using salt content since at least Sir Isaac Newton’s time. Simply measuring the contact of salt requires a date no more than 100 million years old. Drs. “Austin and Humphreys calculated that the ocean must be less than 62 million years old. It’s important to stress that this is not the actual age, but a maximum age. That is, this evidence is consistent with any age up to 62 million years, including the biblical age of about 6,000 years.”36

Providence Canyon Water’s power to shape the landscape provides us with another amazing creation in southwest Georgia. Providence Canyon, sometimes called “Georgia’s Little Grand Canyon” is 1100 acres of canyons carved out by erosion since the early 1800s.37 Though much smaller than the Grand Canyon, it is still one of the largest canyons in America. As the model of the Alton, Illinois bridge helped engineers understand the Mississippi River; Providence Canyon helps us understand the Grand Canyon in Arizona. While neither the Alton Bridge nor the Providence Canyon are perfect models, on a small scale they both accurately model the effects of far greater amounts of water.

Though Providence Canyon is smaller than the Grand Canyon, it has many similar features. The formation of Providence is a scientific fact. Since Providence Canyon is less than two hundred years old, there is no scientific reason to believe the Grand Canyon, or any other canyon, must be millions of years old. All that is needed to make a canyon larger than Providence Canyon is more water, not more time.

Arches National Park Just a few hundred miles north of the Grand Canyon is Arches National Park in Southeast Utah. When the National Park Service took over management of the park in 1971 there were over 2000 natural sandstone arches. Since then many arches have collapsed, the most famous being the collapse of Wall Arch on August 4-5, 2008. Though the exact number of collapsed arches is not documented, if only one arch were to collapse every three years, in less than 675 years there would not be any arches left. There is no evidence that there were ever hundreds of thousands or millions of arches. The evidence indicates that there were never many more arches than we see now. And there is evidence that many arches have fallen since 1971.

The scientific conclusion, based on the scientifically observed collapse of arches, is that either conditions in the recent past were drastically different to preserve the arches or that the arches are much younger than Secular Humanism proclaims them to be. If conditions were similar to the conditions we know now, the arches could be not older than about 4,000 years old. They could easily be younger.38

Stalactites and Stalagmites

Photo Credits39

Stalactites and stalagmites are another geologic feature formed by water. The Lincoln Memorial was built between 1914 and 1922 over land formerly at the bottom of the Potomac River. Stalactites and stalagmites have formed beneath the stairs in the period since the construction was completed (less than 100 years at the time of this writing) as described below.

“… Supports were driven down almost 100 feet to bedrock. This cavernous foundation provides an ideal location for cave-like formations to actively grow. Water on the surface slowly makes its way down through cement stairs into the empty space below. Cement is ‘glued’ together by calcium carbonate. As the water passes through the cement, it dissolves some calcium carbonate and carries it downward. When the water reaches the open space, it leaves behind the calcium carbonate, creating stalactites and stalagmites. This is the same way cave stalactites and stalagmites form, only instead of passing through cement stairs, natural cave features usually form when ground water passes through limestone. Since the cave formations at the Lincoln Memorial aren’t in an actual cave, maybe we should call them ‘under-the-stair-ites’.”40

Dave E. Matson attempts to claim that all the stalactites and stalagmites in existence could not have formed in less than 5000 years.

“The Bulletin of the National Speleological Society (37: p.21, 1975) gives a stalactite/stalagmite growth rate of … 0.1 to 10 centimeters per thousand years. An exceptional spurt of growth might exceed … 10 centimeters or 2.5 inches per thousand years. …Thus, a 60 foot giant, as might be found in Carlsbad Caverns, would have a minimum estimated age of about 180,000 years.”41

Timpanogos Cave National Monument, in American Fork, Utah, is described in park literature as being roughly 65 million years old. Although the claim that the stalactites and stalagmites are millions of years old is no longer being made, secularists still demand thousands of years for the formation of these cave features, usually tens or hundreds of thousands, not the less than a hundred necessary in the Lincoln Memorial.

“Water trickling through the limestone overlying the caves dissolved calcite and other minerals from the rock. …The water deposited its mineral load as tiny crystals on a cave ceiling, wall, or floor. Over thousands of years, as countless crystals were deposited, a variety of cave formations took shape–stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, helictites, and others.”42

Julia E. Cole, University of Tucson professor of Geosciences, studied a limestone cave in southern AZ. The article described the cave formations as “natural climate archives” and said, “The stalagmite yielded an almost continuous century-by-century climate record spanning 55,000 to 11,000 years ago. … Each climate regime lasted from a few hundred years to more than one thousand years.”43 The article’s photo shows Sarah Truebe, a geosciences doctoral student, with a cave formation less than 2 feet tall. The cave itself appears to be less than ten feet in height. The use of these cave features as “natural climate archives” is based on utter conjecture and uniformitarian presupposition.

Each of these claims is nothing more than a gratuitous assertion. The evidence shows the formation of these features, especially of stalactites, take only decades.44

Diamonds Diamonds are reported by Secular Humanists to be at least 45 million years old, formed 75 miles or deeper beneath the earth. Yet laboratory-produced diamonds are made commercially. In 1953 the first industrial grade laboratory-produced diamonds were made. These tiny laboratory-produced diamonds were and still are manufactured for industrial applications such as cutting tools and electrical coatings. More advanced processes coat lenses with laboratory-produced diamond. The laboratory produced diamond industry gradually increased the size and quality of laboratory-produced diamonds. In early 2010 a 2-carat laboratory-produced gemstone-quality diamond was produced in about three days.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) requires the label of laboratory-produced, laboratory-manufactured, or for the product to be identified by the name of the manufacturer along with the specific type of gem rather than using the term synthetic when referring to the type of gem. A laboratory-produced diamond is identical to a geologically-produced diamond is every way; chemically, structurally, and appearance, even on the microscopic level.

A synthetic diamond is still a technically correct term when applied to a laboratory-produced diamond, but some vendors use the term “synthetic” diamond to refer to cubic zirconia, cut glass or any other manmade substitute for a diamond. So the FTC wants to distinguish between real diamonds, both geologic and laboratory-produced, and other crystals which are not diamonds. These other crystals which are not diamonds are often marketed as synthetic diamonds, which they are not.

The existence of laboratory-produced diamonds is a scientific fact. They are produced and reproduced under controlled conditions. Depending on color desired, other chemicals can be added to the crystal-growing process and the resulting gemstone can be pink, green, blue, yellow, and colorless (white). The diamond mining industry is concerned about the number of laboratory-produced diamonds being manufactured. Proclaiming the youngest naturally-occurring diamond to be 45 million years old is a dogmatic religious pronouncement contrary to science. The most reasonable scientific theory is that diamonds were formed suddenly under the correct conditions.45

The RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) research project at the Institute for Creation Research found Carbon 14 in both natural diamonds and ten US coal beds. The upper range of the possible dates for the diamonds was 55,000 years.46

“R.E. Taylor of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California-Riverside and of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California-Los Angeles teamed with J. Southon at the Keck Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory of the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California-Irvine to analyze nine natural diamonds from Brazil. All nine diamonds are conventionally regarded as being at least of early Paleozoic age, that is, at least several hundred million years old. So if they really are that old they should not have any intrinsic 14C in them. Eight of the diamonds yielded radiocarbon ‘ages’ of 64,900 years to 80,000 years.”46

Coal and Oil Carbon can be turned into diamonds, coal and oil. Most of the world uses coal and oil to heat homes and run electric generators. Coal and oil are abundant. Coal was made from plant material that was covered with water and neither coal nor oil is being formed geologically today. There is, however, one possible exception.

When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, the explosion filled Spirit Lake with logs. The bottom of the lake was filled with plant material covered in mud from the eruption. This was under the lake water. Examination of this material showed the early stages of the formation of coal. This, however, is a very tiny deposit compared to the massive coal deposits worldwide.47

Crude petroleum is also produced on a small scale in laboratories from garbage. Like diamonds and petrified wood, the processes that formed coal beds and oil deposits are not going on today. Something is dramatically different about conditions today. Like diamond formation and petrified wood formation, the only possible scientific example of oil and coal formation shows coal and oil being formed rapidly in a catastrophic event.48

Petrified Wood

Just off of Interstate 40 in the Navajo Indian reservation in northeast Arizona is the Petrified Forest. While the Petrified Forest in Arizona is the most well-known of the Petrified Forests, petrified wood can be found all over the world, though it is abundant in dry regions of the western United States. Petrified wood is wood that has turned to stone. The authors have seen petrified tree stumps in South Dakota more than twenty feet in diameter. Perhaps there is a rare exception somewhere, but wood today is not becoming petrified except synthetically. Though modern wood can be synthetically turned into petrified wood, the process only works under highly-controlled conditions.

The existence of synthetic diamonds and manmade petrified wood both scientifically prove that these substances require not immense periods of time but proper conditions to form them. They can be made in days, weeks or months. The religious belief that wood petrified over a great period of time and that the process took place thousands or millions of years ago is without scientific evidence. Even people who insist that wood petrified thousands or millions of years ago must admit wood is not naturally petrifying today. Therefore, something has dramatically changed. Though the most reasonable scientific explanation is a catastrophe, religious dogmas refuse to allow for these scientific explanations.49

Japanese scientists fastened pieces of wood in a hot acid lake. They observed that “after only 7 years the wood had turned into stone, petrified with silica.”50

Preservation in Ice, Tar, and Peat

There is an entire class of creatures entombed in tar, peat bogs, muck and sand; organic remains clearly younger than fossils. Some of the more well-known of these creatures are woolly mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, woolly rhinos, and giant ground sloths. These creatures are not fossilized, that is, turned to stone, but frozen. Though some were preserved in warmer areas by tar, most specimens are frozen and decay quickly when thawed.

Undigested plant remains in their stomachs prove that the animals were frozen quickly. Though pop culture places these animals in the Ice Age, the types of undigested plants found in their stomachs suggest that at the time the animals were frozen they and the plants lived in a warm climate. This indicates that tropical, subtropical or at least temperate conditions existed even in Siberia, Alaska, and northern Canada. Though these creatures obviously died in a catastrophe, this catastrophe was far more recent than the catastrophe which fossilized billions of other creatures worldwide.51

Soft Tissue in Dinosaur Bones Creatures found in tar and ice are said by evolutionists to have come from a later time period than those fossilized, thus minimizing the troublesome issues of their real age. It is harder to dismiss one discovery, soft tissue from the bone of a dinosaur. There is no question that soft tissue deteriorates very rapidly. There is no question as to what such a discovery must mean. Dinosaurs, at least the ones leaving remains with soft tissue, had to have been living at the same time humans lived. The question is, has such a discovery actually been made? Paleontologist Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina University has published her discovery of the remains of blood cells in dinosaur fossils and soft tissue remains in a T. Rex. John Asara of Harvard Medical School and researchers at Palo Alto have verified it.

Blood for transfusions can only be stored for about six weeks. Cryopreservation is only good for about ten years. These facts should help put this discovery into perspective. Not only did Dr. Schweitzer’s team find bone cells, blood cells, and proteins, they also found dinosaur DNA.52

We should also compare this to the soft tissue discovered in a female wooly mammoth carcass. Even uniformitarians only date this to be 10,000 years old. We know that this is more than twice the actual age of the wooly mammoth. The conditions for preservation of the tissue were much better. It was preserved in permafrost at -10o C. Physiologist Kevin Campbell of the University of Manitoba wrote in an email to Kate Wong in a May 30, 2013 article that, “ancient DNA is highly fragmented and by no means “ready to go” into the next mammoth embryo.” He also said “how were these samples preserved in this state for so long?”53

So the soft tissue of Ice Age woolly mammoths preserved in very favorable conditions is puzzling. The preservation of dinosaur soft tissue for millions of years is, by comparison, impossible.54

The evidence is overwhelming. The conclusions, however, are even more astounding. Rather than admit the obvious, that the bones with the remains of soft tissue were young, the published reports maintain that the bones are millions of years old, but some process not now understood preserved the soft tissue. There is no evidence of such an unknown process. This is a classic attempt to make the evidence fit the preconception.54 It is also a glaring example of professional bigotry. This kind of article can never be published without a claim that the bones are millions of years old.

Mary Schweitzer is firmly committed to ignoring the implications of her work, that these bones are very, very young. That secures her professional position. If she were to acknowledge this implication, that would be the end of her professional career. Eventually well-orchestrated condemnation would cost the author her job, as documented repeatedly in Ben Stein’s movie Expelled.55

No Great Ape Fossils “No fossils of any of the great apes — gorillas, chimpanzees or orangutans — have ever been found. As far as the fossil record is concerned, they never existed; and yet we know from the evidence of our own eyes that they did, and do.”56

Though hundreds, perhaps thousands, of news releases, newspaper articles, magazine articles, radio, video, and internet announcements have proclaimed the discovery of a fossil of a great ape, none has ever been verified. Such discoveries have either proven to not be fossilized, and therefore much younger, or not to be a great ape. Some who carefully examine the evidence come to the reasoned conclusion that evolution is not scientifically valid. They do not find reproductive links in the evolutionary chain. Creationists are frequently charged with ignoring the evidence. Richard Dawkins claims to refute the fossil gap arguments in his numerous books, although he doesn’t really refute them at all. He just dismisses the arguments with a bald, unsupported statement that large numbers of intermediates exist. “Creationists are deeply enamored of the fossil record …[They] repeat, over and over, the mantra that it is full of ‘gaps’: ‘Show me your “intermediates!”’ …We [have]…massive numbers … to document evolutionary history … beautiful ‘intermediates.’ … The fossil evidence for evolution in many major animal groups is wonderfully strong. Nevertheless there are, of course, gaps, and creationists love them obsessively.”57

The truth is that there is nothing for mankind to link to. Neanderthals interbred with modern man. A skull found in Pestera cu Oase, “The Cave of Bones” in Romania, has characteristics of both so-called “species.”

“The skull bearing both older and modern characteristics is discussed in a paper by Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis. The report appears in today’s [January 15, 2007] issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“…The researchers said the skull had the same proportions as a modern human head and lacked the large brow ridge commonly associated with Neanderthals. However, there were also features that are unusual in modern humans, such as frontal flattening, a fairly large bone behind the ear and exceptionally large upper molars, which are seen among Neanderthals and other early hominids.

“Such differences raise important questions about the evolutionary history of modern humans,” said co-author João Zilhão of the University of Bristol, England.58 Therefore, Neanderthals are men. Without any fossil evidence of creatures for man to evolve from, evolution of humans is a religious leap of faith. There is no evidence of any link and no fossil evidence of anything to link to.

Mitochondrial DNA Any link would controlled by DNA. The most important aspect of the soft tissue discovery in the dinosaur is the DNA. DNA is in all cells of all living organisms. The tiniest cell in the human body contains the same DNA in the nucleus as the largest cell. This genetic coding determines hair color, shape of our nostrils, and every other detail of our body. As every student of high school biology knows, this DNA inside the nucleus contains genetic material from both our mother and our father. But many people are unaware of another type of DNA known as mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA exists within the cell’s mitochondria outside of the nucleus and contains only genetic material from our mothers. Since there is no mixing of genetic material, a child’s mitochondrial DNA should be an exact duplicate of the mother’s mitochondrial DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA controls individual cell functions, not genetically encoded information. Infinite generations with genetically different fathers can have identical mitochondrial DNA but radically different physical characteristics. This should allow for a trace of mitochondrial DNA back to the beginning the human race. We could perform this trace, except for the problem of genetic mutations. Since a child’s normal mitochondrial DNA is identical to his mother’s, any mutation starts a new line. Minor mutations are difficult to detect and major mutations, such as those caused by massive radiation exposure, produce children who are unable to survive. But a few extremely rare mutations have produced traceable lines.

In 1997, Nature Genetics published an article with the innocuous title “A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control rate.” An abstract is available online for free. Though the technical language is absolutely necessary for accuracy, it distracts the average reader. Even with nothing but the abstract, the force of this study is overwhelming.

“…We report a direct measurement of the intergenerational substitution rate in the human CR [Control Region – a section of the DNA that controls other sections of DNA]. We compared DNA sequences of two CR hypervariable segments from close maternal relatives, from 134 independent mtDNA lineages spanning 327 generational events. Ten substitutions were observed, resulting in an empirical rate of 1/33 generations, or 2.5/site/Myr. This is roughly twenty-fold higher than estimates derived from phylogenetic analyses. This disparity cannot be accounted for simply by substitutions at mutational hot spots, suggesting additional factors that produce the discrepancy between very near-term and long-term apparent rates of sequence divergence. The data also indicate that extremely rapid segregation of CR sequence variants between generations is common in humans, with a very small mtDNA bottleneck.”59

What this study did was take mitochondrial DNA samples from living volunteers and compared it to mitochondrial DNA from their ancestors. The test subjects had to have accurate records of their ancestors for hundreds of years, so all test subjects had to be European. Corpses had to be available with accurate records and preserved well enough that mitochondrial DNA could be obtained. The study went back approximately 550 years.

The test results proved that mutations happen at a significantly higher rate than geneticists thought possible. The resulting statistical analysis came to two stunning conclusions.

First, applying this data to other studies gives an approximate date of 6,000-6,500 BP (Before Present) for Mitochondrial Eve.60

Catastrophes powerful enough to move marine ammonites to the top of Mount Everest, and tilt Lake Titicaca, could easily, temporarily and dramatically, increase the mutation rate, making even the 6,000-year-old date too old.

Second is the “very small mtDNA bottleneck.” This means that at some point in the history of the human race there were very few women. Bryan Sykes, author of The Seven Daughters of Eve believes that all Europeans currently alive can be traced back to one of seven women. Though Sykes is a well-respected English geneticist, as a committed Secular Humanist he makes two common though critical errors. These two errors have become the “standard” which any geneticist who expects to be published must adhere to. These errors are required by the religious dogma of Secular Humanism. Because his religious dogma demands that the human race is much older than the scientific evidence shows, he makes the leap of faith that the 2.5/site/Myr was lower in the past. His second error is assuming by a leap of faith, without any scientific evidence, that these seven women represent the smallest point of the bottleneck.

The Bible says that the sons of Noah brought their wives on the ark. These three women are the smallest point of the bottleneck. Their daughters or granddaughters might be the seven women of Bryan Sykes. Since conditions at that time could easily cause increased genetic mutations, their daughters, granddaughters or great granddaughters could easily be the seven women isolated by Bryan Sykes. When you read The Seven Daughters of Eve, understand that the last part of the book is devoted to fictional indoctrination. He novelizes each of these women and places each of them in a “cavewoman” setting. This is as antiscientific an approach as possible. Nevertheless the book was published. The scientific evidence of Mitochondrial DNA concludes that the human race is much younger than the published dates, less than 10,000 years, and that at one time in the very recent past the entire human race had no more than seven women. Bryan Sykes added the cavewoman fictions to assure publication. Such fabrications are the essence of the academic requirements for upholding the secularist dogma.56

He also claims that this genetic bottleneck of seven women is only for women of European descent, not the entire human race.

A much better study, without the approval of the academic community, therefore without the publicity, is Dr. Robert W. Carter’s Adam, Eve and Noah vs Modern Genetics. This article also explores why the Y chromosome supports a recent genetic bottleneck. Dr. Carter states, “There are three main mitochondrial DNA lineages found across the world. The evolutionists have labeled these lines “M”, “N”, and “R”…”61

Thermodynamics Engineers can earn a PhD in many subcategories of the massive field of thermodynamics. The dynamics of heat affects all other aspects of engineering. The first two laws of thermodynamics are well-tested and well-proved. While the implications are massive, the first two laws are simple. The first law of thermodynamics: The conservation of energy. Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another.

Albert Einstein popularized the first law of thermodynamics with his famous proposition “If a body at rest emits a total energy of E while remaining at rest, then the mass of that body decreases by E/c2.”

This is oversimplified into E=mc2. Though technically this only applies to a body at rest, it is a workable understanding of the concept that matter and energy are interchangeable. In this formula, “c” represents the speed of light, in a vacuum, 299, 792, 458 meters per second or 186,300 miles per second. Here is a link to a blog which works through the Lorentz transformation to explain how Albert Einstein arrived at his final formula.62 According to the first law of thermodynamics the universe is either 1) eternal, 2) created out of nothing, or 3) came into existence through some process that we know nothing about.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states “in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state.” This is also commonly referred to as entropy. Another way of stating entropy is that all energy changes are in a downward direction.63 Without a belief in the religious dogma that the universe is infinite and can therefore obtain energy from “outside” the system (which is scientifically unprovable), entropy will eventually lead to a “heat death” for the entire universe. Everything in the universe will be motionless, at a uniform temperature near absolute zero, broken down into subatomic particles.

Each one of these examples of physical evidence has the same message. To repeat a quote from Dr. Danny R. Faulkner at the beginning of this chapter:

“While the early faint Sun paradox does not tell us that the Solar System is only thousands of years old, it does seem to rule out the age being billions of years.”64

We can rephrase this statement to make it more inclusive. While none of these points in this chapter tell us that the earth is only thousands of years old, each one individually and all of them collectively seem to rule out the age being billions of years.

We close with the words of the committed Secular Humanist, Isaac Asimov, as he condemns not only his own belief system, but also the belief systems of everyone who reject the evidence for the Word of God.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.1John Adams

Sometime in the early twentieth century, Secular Humanist indoctrination convinced almost everyone in the United States that “an establishment of religion” in the first phrase of the first amendment of the United States Constitution is vague and can mean just about anything. “The state of the facts and evidence,” as John Adams so eloquently put it, is the exact opposite.

Section One of this work documents what the founders meant by the phrase “an establishment of religion. ” The Founding Fathers made as clear a statement as the English language permitted. The Constitution of the United States is founded on English law and to a lesser extent, various European laws, especially German and Dutch. In each of these countries, an Establishment of Religion was the collection of taxes to support education, welfare and public worship. The various governments appointed the teachers, welfare workers and pastors and expected these people to support the government in turn.

The original state constitutions not only permitted, but openly encouraged establishments of religion, especially in the areas of welfare and education. The foundation of the US Constitution is the fact that federal government was to have no control whatsoever in these areas. Their concept of a separation of Church and State was the exact opposite of what the courts have rammed down our throats for the past hundred years. The church should have the right to pray and teach without any federal intervention whatsoever. Judges should have the right to post any Scriptures they want. The courts should have no authority whatsoever to comment. Removing a state judge from office for posting the Ten Commandments is not merely an Establishment of Religion. It is the Inquisition.

Section Two documents the foundations of Secular Humanism and how it grew to become America’s Establishment of Religion. The words “Secular Humanism ” come from various groups in the 1950’s. The phrase “Secular Humanist ” is found in court documents to describe this set of beliefs. Secular Humanism is as old as civilization, but the primary foundation of twenty first century Secular Humanism is Plato’s Republic. In America, Secular Humanism can be said to have originated with Thomas Paine. Secular Humanism has specific beliefs which are written down in various manifestos. Like Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Secular Humanism has many variations. Though Secular Humanists do not like the term, the most accurate words to describe these variants are “sects ” or “denominations. ” Like Christians, Muslims and Jews, many Secular Humanist denominations do not get along with one another. Therefore, we have attempted to point out the beliefs which have the greatest agreement.

Section Three defines science, since Secular Humanists claim that science separates them from all other religions. Since true science is founded in the belief, faith and trust of the Bible, all of these words are defined carefully and in detail. In the Bible, belief, faith and trust are legal terms. Believe means to examine the evidence and come to a reasoned conclusion. Action taken on that belief is faith. Trust is the passive version of faith.

The Scientific Method is the biblical version of belief, faith and trust applied to the material world which God created for us. In the Bible, the Scientific Method recognizes that God is the creator, that we are required to be responsible managers of the material world God has given us and that there is a final judgment after death which will include how well we managed the gifts God allowed us to use.

Our book concludes with Section Four, the results of having Secular Humanism as an Establishment of Religion. With the exception of America’s founding documents and the ancient documents such as Plato, Plutarch and Genesis, hundreds of other quotes could easily be substituted for the quotes that appear here. There is nothing new or unique in this book. It is a combination of what used to be common knowledge in America before Secular Humanism took over and destroyed the education system and current events. If we were to start over today, we would pull different stories from the daily news. Though the individual stories would be different, the points would be the same. “There is nothing new under the sun ” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Or to state the same thing another way, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

America’s Established Religion is Secular Humanism. This work is dedicated to exposing, defining and disestablishing it.

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1 John Adams, “Argument in defence of the [English] soldiers in the Boston Massacre trial,” December 1770.